Aug
20
A US court has ruled that an American blogger cannot be anonymous and is legally accountable for the comments on their blog. Meanwhile, the Olympic Delivery Authority has asked a community blog to remove comments left on their blog concerning one of their employees. Bloggers are legally responsible for the content they publish.
But convention is that blogs are judged by the person writing them rather than those reading them- much the same as a speech is judged by the speaker as opposed to the audience they attract. We like to congregate on blogs that are busy, lively places and the hierarchy of blogs rests heavily on those which are most widely read. That’s odd. One of the key differences between a blog and a newspaper op-ed is the relationship between the writer and the audience. Blogs are meant to be more discursive, iterative spaces where the blogger listens and learns, not just informs and speaks.
On the biggest blogs, the author moderates comments in order (partly) to limit their potential legal liability. However, it is rare that they read all of the comments they receive. Robert Peston and Nick Robinson appear to have all but given up on engaging with the comments on their blogs. Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes do occasionally enter the fray but it’s not a guaranteed way of entering a dialogue with the author.
On these blogs the tone is often confrontational, aggressive, conspiratorial and strident. They are also off-topic and often uninformative – identifying the funny, informative comments is hard work. Is that because the commenters know that they are not being watched?
There’s no appetite for bloggers extensively moderating their comments. The internet is profoundly biased in favour of freedom of expression and any sign of censorship usually leads to a dramatic loss of audience. But does that mean that successful blogs have to put up with irrelevant, daft or unpleasant comments?
There are blogs where the comments are generally constructive and thoughtful. Whilst many of these have a small readership, they don’t all. Matthew Taylor’s blog, one of those I know best, has a readership approaching 10,000 a month and rarely attractives invective (and often only when people confuse him with being a Cornwall MP. Matthew doesn’t respond to every comment – and commenters more often engage with each other. But it’s a welcoming, open space.
If I invite you to attend a performance of my local drama club, I wouldn’t expect you to judge me by the audience. But if I invite you to my birthday party, I would expect some judgement on the company that I keep. And if you ask any teacher, leave a group to its own devices and it will set its own rules. But lead that group or community, and you can shape it and influence its norms.
Blogs are just a communications medium and bad practice should not weaken the very best blogs in the same way that Big Brother doesn’t tarnish my view of The Wire. But as the medium matures, perhaps we should refine the criteria by which we select where we want to hang out. We choose our local pubs more selectively than picking the one with the largest number of punters. And we pass judgement on people by the company they keep. Perhaps its time for a greater range of criteria by which readers choose their blogs – and in turn a greater responsibility placed on bloggers to take responsibility for the behaviour of their community.
Related posts:
- A blogging apology
- Bloggers Circle 2 months on
- Bloggers Circle: week one assessment
- New joiners to the Bloggers Circle
- bloggers circle: month 1 assessment
I’m glad you bring this subject up, I was interested in reading about this US blogger last night, indeed I have written my own entry about whether a blogger can go too far. These same arguments emerged when NightJack, the anon blogging policeman, was outed by a Times reporter. At the time some who supported the move by the journalist to uncover NightJack said that he would’ve been made to sign privacy wavers and so on. I, and many other bloggers, were not so understanding.
But this latest blogger has no such obligations to privacy laws, he was just a “trash talker” – by his own admission. And, in fact, surely google have their own privacy laws to maintain, but it seems these can be broken if the celebrity is important enough, or his/her attorney trendy enough. Very irrepsonisble move I say.
I agreed with the unmasking of NightJack insofar as blogging is an inherently public act. But I don’t understand why The Times thought it was in the public interest.
But whether anonymous or not, I think a blogger has a responsibility for setting the tone and rules of their blog. Simply saying ‘I get lots of crap comments because it reflects public opinion’ isn’t really good enough.
Interesting thoughts Matthew. You’re right that the tone of a lot of comments on a number of blogs is pretty confrontational and angry. I suppose some of the political blogs will attract that kind of comment because of the polarised nature of politics. But it’s not just the politics blogs which attract that kind of commenter. To be honest I don’t really understand why people have to be like that – it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose other than giving people an opportunity to say things that they wouldn’t say if they met the same person down the pub. From the start, when I’ve written something a bit more confrontational, I’ve asked myself “would I say this if I met this person face to face?”. If I would, then usually I’ll keep it in.
I think bloggers have some responsibility in this, but that responsibility is limited. I think you can set a tone with the kind of debate that you encourage, and in the way that you write. For the size of my readership I get a good number of comments, and I think that’s because I tend to write in the way that I think – my thoughts are a work in progress rather than a finished product. That, in turn, encourages most people to respond in a similar way.
I think responding to comments is important too -if you want your blog to be a place of debate, rather than pontification and polarisation.
I’m not sure I understand your point about the possible need for criteria by which people choose the blogs they read. Don’t people do that already?
Thanks
Rob
Interesting. I have posted a long response here:
http://www.charlescrawford.biz/blog/NSHT1C716911
Basically, there are two issue methinks:
- whether a slanderous comment appears on one’s blog
- whether the ‘owner’ of the blog allows it to stay there
The most accurate (but still inadequate) metaphor/analogy might be a public speaker who starts to orate in his/her front garden but leaves the gate open so that anyone can come in to listen. If the audience then start to shout abuse at the speaker or others, is the speaker morally or legally responsible for them?
Surely not. Or not much.
But in that case, the abuse/slander is briefly emitted into the atmosphere and floats away. What if the speaker lets one particularly belligerent character stay in his garden after the speech is over, and that person then screams abuse at someone out there on the street? Surely in that case the owner of the garden might be thought to have some responsibility for what is happening on his/her land?
And so on …
It may be a particular thing about political blogs, Rob. But I think the blogosphere has unleashed a level of aggression and nastiness that was hitherto absent from mainstream political debate in the UK.
My contention is that the blogger can do a lot to tone this down by the way in which they respond to comments and try to move the commenter past the knee-jerk reactions (in the same way a heckler can be dealt with in real life, I suppose).
I think many blogs are judged by pretty basic standards – how many comments, how many readers – than more qualitative judgements about the value of the process. Perhaps I made the point in a bit of a tortured fashion.
I had to smile at your reference to the absence of aggression and nastiness from mainstream political debate. When was the last time you picked up the Daily Mail or read Richard Littlejohn?
I agree that blogs tend to be judged quite crudely. I think that will change as people become more aware of the diversity of material in the blogosphere. Of course it doesn’t help that the mainstream media, being lazy, always reference the same blogs, just as they always quote the same politicians and so-called experts.
That’s absolutely true, Julian. But I do think that people go further on blogs (and anonymity helps that) than they would in real life – particularly when the blog owner ‘isn’t watching’ as it were.
I’m not great on analogies, frankly Charles – but I take the point.
I suppose my position (and your post deserves a longer reply) is that a blog is meant to be more than just a platform for speaking but a place for engaging. In the same way as you criticise the house owner for too much noise at a party, so it should be a source of embarrassment for a blogger if their comments are crap. At the moment, it isn’t. any high profile bloggers see it as inevitable. That’s a pity.
Matthew: have you seen some of the academic research into how the style of comments and moderation in turn influences the tone that other people take? I blogged about it briefly last year – http://bit.ly/aOJIG – and the logic is very much along the ‘broken windows’ lines, i.e. once people start behaving poorly, it drags everything down.
Mark – not sure I was able to see the academic research here but the basic link with ‘broken windows’ makes sense, I think.